Associate Professor Hayes began researching why women stay in abusive relationships about four years ago, research that has culminated in her new book Sex, Love and Abuse: Discourses on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault.

A glaring finding of her research, which included analysing online discussion forums for victims of domestic violence, was that many women, like the heroine princesses of many a Disney film, stay in abusive relationships because they believe it is up to them to “fix” their damaged partners.

Ideals promoted in fairy tales can make women vulnerable to domestic abuse, according to researchers. Photo: Saint Hoax

“Ideals of romantic love impact on people and sometimes become distorted,” she said.

“Movies like Beauty and the Beast and a lot of the other movies, show love to be really tragic, in the way the male is damaged, there is always something wrong with him and he has a reason to be abusive.

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“There is always a woman who thinks she can fix him and my theory is we are socialised into this.”

Associate Professor Hayes singled out 1991’s Beauty and the Beast, as the heroine is taken prisoner by an ugly beast, who is transformed to facilitate the inevitable happily-ever-after ending by her being loving towards him.

It is far from the first time the Disney’s highly successful happily-ever-after fairytale formula has been tied to domestic violence.

"By portraying Disney princesses as victims of domestic violence, I'm proposing the idea that no girl/woman is safe from being emotionally/physically/sexually abused."

Associate Professor Hayes said it was not just Disney films to blame, with the ideal permeating much of our entertainment culture.

She described the recent Twilight series, in which the main character falls for a vampire who treats her badly and begs him to kill her so she can stay with him forever as, “quite sick”.

“I have nothing against romance, as long as women are treated equally,” she said.

“When you start to interpret jealousy and controlling behaviour as romantic, that’s when it’s distorted.

“It probably doesn’t pertain that much to physical abuse but in emotionally and psychologically abusive relationships, it’s hard for some women to identify it as abuse.”

Associate Professor Hayes said Disney had made a concerted effort in recent times to move away from storylines portraying the heroine needing to be rescued, giving up her life for Prince Charming and living happily ever after, after growing criticism of its highly successful formula.

However, with the storyline having been the basis for almost every Disney fairytale since the company began producing animated features, she said there was much undoing of ingrained cultural ideals to be done.

“Even if Disney changes the image of their female heroines, we still have magazines like Maxim publishing their top 100 women and saying all sorts of sexist things about women, with advertisements of submission and air-brushed photos of women,” she said.

“Sexism is just endemic and it will take a long time to overturn that.”

Associate Professor Hayes said while the vast majority of men were not abusive to their partners, there remained a casual sexism among groups of men that gave those who are abusive a quiet condoning of their behaviour.

“There are so many good men who won’t be abusive ever to any woman but they still might be sexist,” she said.

“They might be politically correct in front of their girlfriends but they know when they get together they are talking about that hot girl down the street, it’s still part of the construction of masculinity, the bro code. The idea of bros before hoes, that guys stick together and police each other.”

She said while women had for many years made inroads into dismantling the ideal that what happens behind closed doors, stays behind closed doors, real change would only come when men sought to further dismantle it by not condoning domestic abuse in any form.

“The only way forward, and Disney is doing its job in that regard, is raising awareness of the reality, of what’s really out there,” she said.

“It will be over eventually but change comes slowly."

Professor Hayes' book Sex, Love and Abuse: Discourse on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault is published by Macmillan and available now.